Note: There’s a couple of errors of interpretation in this post. I’m not going to re-write it, because I wrote what I wrote, and it’s in the public domain, and I don’t think it’s all that dignified to pretend that one never makes blunders; it’s better to acknowledge them, take the hit, and move on. […]
Latest articles
CfP: Criminalizing Contagion: Ethical, legal and clinical challenges of prosecuting the spread of disease and sexually transmitted infections
The BMJ Group journals Sexually Transmitted Infections and Journal of Medical Ethics, in conjunction with academics at the Centre for Social Ethics and Policy (University of Manchester) and the Health Ethics and Law Network (University of Southampton), would like to publish a collection of articles on the criminalization of disease and sexually transmitted infections. We invite article […]
Nothing to lose? Killing is disabling
Guest post by Dominic Wilkinson (Cross-posted from Practical Ethics) In a provocative article forthcoming in the Journal of Medical Ethics (one of a new series of feature articles in the journal) philosophers Walter Sinnott Armstrong and Franklin Miller ask ‘what makes killing wrong?’ Their simple and intuitively appealing answer is that killing is wrong because […]
Calling Charlton Heston…
It’s been a while since the last post, and there’s a couple of serious entries on the way – but they’ve been displaced by a bit of silliness from Oklahoma. State Senator Ralph Shortey (or SHortey, if you follow his Facebook style) has introduced a Bill demanding that [n]o person or entity shall manufacture or […]
Nootropic Drugs in the Professions
Across at NewAPPS, Eric Schliesser wonders aloud about how common nootropic drug use is in professional philosophy. (Nootropics are are “drugs, supplements, nutraceuticals, and functional foods that improve mental functions such as cognition, memory, intelligence, motivation, attention, and concentration” – Wikipedia.) And, quite rightly, some of the commentators have pointed out that it’s fairly common. Actually, it’s more […]
Suffering and the Human Condition
I’m currently working my way through the recently-released report by the Commission on Assisted Dying – it’s a long and appropriately life-sapping document, but a number of commentators has been quicker than I to get through it. Douglas Noble, writing at the BMJ blog, isn’t impressed. Based on what I’ve read so far, I’m tempted […]
A Little Something for the Holiday…
Here’s a little holiday challenge for you: come up with a bioethical controversy that some dark part of your soul wants to be real, if only because (a) you can get a paper out of it, and (b) it’ll cause heart attacks among the sort of people who make a point of listening to The […]
Is Bird Flu Research a Security Risk?
A story that has had a little airtime on the news over the last 24 hours or so concerns requests by US officials that details of research into a bird flu variant be held back from publication on the grounds that it might be of use to terrorists: The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity recommended […]
A Conscience Clause with Claws
There’s a flurry of papers on conscientious objection in the latest JME: Giles Birchley argues, taking his cue from Arendt, that conscientious objection has a place in medicine here; Sophie Strickland’s paper on medical students’ attitude to conscientious objection (which I mentioned in July) is here; and Morten Magelssen wonders when conscientious objection should be accepted here. […]
A Philosopher Writes on her own Infertility
Over at Feminist Philosophers, there’s a great little series of posts by an anonymous female philosopher about her experience of becoming infertile. It’s well worth a read: part 1 is here; part 2 here; and part 3 here. I’m going to take the liberty of reproducing the penultimate paragraph: My partner and I are a […]